THE POETICS OF EVERYDAY LANGUAGE

D R . GEOFF. HALL*
University of Wales Swansea, UK

ABSTRACT
There is a growing recognition on the part of linguists that everyday 'ordi-
nary' language is shot through with supposed poeticisms -metaphor, idiom
and other varieties of non-literal language and language use. Gibbs (1994) has
even questioned the usefulness of a literal- non-literal language divide, while
Crter and Nash (1990) propose a more modest cline of literariness, from tech-
nical writing through ordinary conversations to advertising and on to literary
text. In this view, possibly the only linguistic or formal feature differentiating
literary language from more everyday uses is the tolerance of literature for
almost all varieties and registers where non-literary texts are more conserva-
tive. The implications for the learner of a language are clear: if you really want
to learn a range of language, you will need to engage with its 'literariness'.
In the light of such a position, this paper proposes and illustrates a 'poet-
ic wager' (after Gibbs's 1994 'cognitive wager'), that is, that language is best
understood not in a Saussurean mould as arbitrary and unmotivated, but as
fundamentally poetically and performatively structured, at every level, validat-
ing in this way the native speaker or successful learner's intuitive 'feel' for 'le
mot juste' in whatever situation, with the proviso that such intuitions can be
systematically analysed and explicated and so also drawn to the attention of
the learner.
Literature/literature (McRae, 199D, then, in the view of this paper, is not
a luxury or optional extra, but central to language learning. Importantly, lit-
erary or poetic effects are to be found and exploited in all instances of lan-
guage use, where in current practice they are typically ignored or marginalised
in formal learning.
KEY WORDS
Poetics-linguistic creativity, language awareness, everyday language, cul-
ture, foreign language teaching, focus on form-pragmatics

* Geoff Hall (M.A. Birmingham), (M.A., D.Phil. Sussex) worked in Singapore,

Sweden, Poland, Spain and others, mainly for the British Council, from 1983. From
1993 to 1999, Lecturer in Language and Communication, Cardiff University. At present
Lecturer in Applied Language Studies, University of Wales Swansea. Reviews Editor for
the journal Language and Literature. Research interests in language in education, liter-
acy and stylistics.

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 GEOFF HALL

RESUMEN

Existe un creciente reconocimiento por parte de los lingistas de que el

lenguaje 'comn' de todos los das est permeado de usos supuestamente po-
ticos metforas, modismos y otras variedades del lenguaje o del uso lings-
tico no literales. Gibbs (1994) ha llegado a cuestionarse la utilidad de una
divisin entre lenguaje literal y no literal, mientras Crter y Nash (1990) pro-
ponen una gradacin de literariedad ms modesta, desde los escritos tcnicos,
pasando por las conversaciones normales, hasta la publicidad y finalmente el
texto literario. Desde este punto de vista, quizs los nicos rasgos lingsticos
o formales que diferencian el lenguaje literario de los usos ms cotidianos es
la tolerancia que presenta la literatura hacia prcticamente todas las varieda-
des y registros, mientras que los textos no literarios son ms conservadores,
est claro lo que esto implica para quien aprende una lengua: si de verdad
se quiere aprender un rango de una lengua, es preciso considerar su 'litera-
riedad'.
Desde esta posicin, este trabajo propone e ilustra una 'apuesta potica'
(a partir del concepto 'apuesta cognitiva' de Gibb 1994), es decir, que se
entiende mejor el lenguaje no como arbitrario y no-motivado segn el molde
saussureano, sino como fundamentalmente potico y estructurado de manera
performativa, a todos los niveles, dando de esta forma validez a cmo los
hablantes nativos o los estudiantes avanzados 'notan' intuitivamente cul es 'le
mot juste' en cualquier situacin, bajo el presupuesto de que esas intuiciones
pueden ser analizadas y explicadas de manera sistemtica, y de esta forma
tambin sometidas a la consideracin del estudiante.
La Literatura/literatura (McRae, 1991) por tanto, a la luz de este artculo,
no es un lujo ni un extra opcional, sino un elemento central en el aprendi-
zaje de una lengua. Es significativo que puedan encontrarse y explotarse efec-
tos literarios o poticos en todos los ejemplos del uso de la lengua, mientras
que la prctica habitual del aprendizaje formal suele ignorarlos o marginarlos.
PALABRAS CLAVE
Potica, creatividad lingstica, conciencia lingstica, lenguaje cotidiano,
cultura, enseanza de una lengua extranjera, atencin a la forma, pragmtica.

RESUME

Les linguistes reconnaissent de plus en plus l'utilisation frquente, dans la

langue quotidienne, de termes potiques tels que les mtaphores, les locutions
idiomatiques et de tout autre type de langage non-littral. Gibbs (1994) a mme
mis en cause l'utilit de la divisin du langage en deux catgories -littral et
non-littral- tandis que Crter et Nash (1990) proposent plus modestement une
graduation d'attachement au littraire; des crits techniques aux textes littraires
en passant par les discussions habituelles et par les annonces publicitaires. A
cet gard, la seule caractristique formelle ou linguistique qui diffrencie la
langue littraire de celle de tous les jours est probablement la capacit de la

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 THE POETICS OF EVERYDAY LANGUAGE

littrature accepter presque tous les types et variets de langue tandis que
les textes non-littraires sont plus conservateurs. Les consquences pour celui
ou celle qui apprend une langue sont clairs: pour vraiment la maitriser il faut
s'engager avec sa 'littrarit'.
En prenant ce point de vue en compte, cet essai propose et exemplifie
un 'pari potique' (d'aprs le 'par cognitif de Gibbs, 1994), c'est--dire que
la langue n'est pas comprise au mieux comme arbitraire (thorie de Saussure),
mais en tant que structure potiquement et performativement a chaqu
niveau. De cette maniere et dans toute situation, 1 intuition pour le "mot juste"
pour celui ou celle dont c'est la langue maternelle ou pour la personne qui
apprend effectivement la langue est valide. Nanmoins cet instinct doit tre
systematiquement analys, expliqu et ainsi port l'attention de l'apprenant.
A la lumire done de cet essai, la littrature/Littrature (McRae, 1991) n'est
pas un luxe ou une option facultative, mais quelque chose de central pour
l'apprentissage de la langue. Il est important de souligner que les effets po-
tiques et littraires doivent etre recherchs et exploits a chaqu emploi de la
langue, alors que dans l'usage courant ils sont souvent ignores ou marginal-
iss l'apprentissage formel.
MOTS-CL
Potique, crativit linguistique, prise de conscience de la langue, langue
quotidienne, culture, enseignement d'une langue trangre, forme linguistique,
pragmatique.

THE ARGUMENT

My title begs terms provocatively but is meant to stimulate the read-

er to a new view of language, and by extensin to a new view of lan-
guage teaching too. At the same time, I build upon a growing volume
of research and publications, particularly in pragmatics, which arge
the centrality of creative play to actual language use in the social world
(see Crter, 1999, for an accessible introduction to such work).
In a sense, such a proposition -the linguistic creativity of everyday
life- should not surprise us. Chomsky and followers have long insist-
ed on creativity as a species unique feature of human language. How-
ever, Chomsky also notoriously insisted on at best agnosticism as
regards the applicability of his ideas on language to language educa-
tion or even the real phenomenological world individuis experience
day by day (Chomsky, 1973). More influential for many applied lin-
guists in recent years will have been Hallidayan sociolinguistic ideas on
the routine prefabricated chunks of language typically cobbled togeth-
er as we speak and write (Pawley and Syder, 1983, Nattinger and de

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 GEOFF HALL

Carrico, 1992; Lewis, 1993), the formulaic nature of speech genres

(Coulmas, 1981), or corpus studies which repeatedly show us the sig-
nificant gap between what a language may theoretically, generatively,
allow, and the selections that actual speakers in fact typically perform
in their ongoing interactions.
Building on some of the previous work mentioned, then, and illus-
trating such ideas further with some of my own data, I will initially aim
to demnstrate the significantly creative nature of everyday language
use (English language in this case), and some of the forms this cre-
ativity takes. The argument here is that form is normally a key element
of meaning (compare Halliday's language as a system of choices'), and
that ordinary speakers in everyday interactions habitually demnstrate
a keen interest in and awareness of linguistic form. Such an interest is
not exclusive to archetypes of dreamy poets or pampered undergrad-
uates who should go out and work for a living (or even to writers of
articles in journals of philology and pedagogy).
Having established the extent and something of the nature of this
poetics of everyday language creativity, my second aim is to persuade
readers of the relevance of all this to a modern anthropological under-
standing of culture as the negotiated, interactive processes of everyday
life, mediated, enacted, even coming into being, through language
exchanges. Thus Street (1993) writes of 'culture as a verb', a contin-
gent notion of what individuis do in their worldly interactions with
each other, more than who or what they 'are' or 'believe' (French/
white/middle-class/heterosexual/woman, etc.). (Compare Agar's [1994]
'languaculture')- In this vew, 'Members of society are agents of culture
rather than bearers of culture' (Ochs, quoted in Roberts, 1998, p. 110).
The point of such an understanding of culture, in moving to the
third major stage of my argument, is to see the relevance to language
teaching of the understanding of creative language use as central, even
the norm, and in particular its relevance to a narrow 'communicative'
view of language teaching. This dominant 'communicative' view is
seemingly predicated upon the notion of language as information
exchange, a drab model of encoding and decoding with no time for
frills such as exploration of the expressive resources of a language
(compare Reddy, 1979). While such a view may appeal to Communi-
cations engineers, software designers or implementers of AirSpeak, it
bears no relation to the realities of any existing language as language
in extended use (outside the idealised fictions of grammars and dic-
tionaries, that is), or could it ever do so, since language (use) is not

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 THE POETICS OF EVERYDAY LANGUAGE

like that. Ordinary language, paradoxically, doesn't exist, at least not

unless it is understood as an extraordinary range of creativity and vari-
eties (Fish, 1973; Pratt, 1977). Ordinary language use is a form -the pri-
mary form of human communication. A crude view of communicative
language teaching has urged that our students should forget the niceties
and get on with meaning. Rather, as those students with their well-
motivated interest in form for its own sake have long been telling their
teachers, form is crucial to meaning. How you say it and what you say
are not easily separable, and in attempting to disregard form (as resource,
note, not as prescription) we do a disservice to learners of the culture-
language. Vales, identities, modalities and attitudes are an inseparable
feature of any language instance or event, however inconvenient thay
may be to those who would like to hypostatise and commodify the
organic. But enough of these romantic flights -let us turn to scrutinise
the real: but whose real?

1. THE POETICS OF EVERYDAY LANGUAGE USE

Too often, when we teach, the unit in the course book:

[M]ore often misses than secures the thing we seek. Whether we cali it
life, or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or
on, and refuses to be confined any longer in such ill-fitting vestments
as we provide. Nevertheless, we go on perseveringly, conscientiously,
[following] our two and thirty chapters after a design which more and
more ceases to resemble the visin in our minds (p. 188).
Thus Virginia Woolf (1919), articulating the modernist rejection of
dominant models of the 'real' (in the novel, not in EFL textbooks admit-
tedly!). In the same way, I arge, language teaching workers need to
reject dominant reductive notions of communication as transactional
information exchange as both undesirable and, perhaps more impor-
tant, unattainable. Language that worked like that would not be recog-
nisably language-like (as too many of our students speak the awkward
classroom register of the language they are supposedly being taught).
But what is the alternative? Woolf contines, in the same essay:
Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being 'like this'. Exam-
ine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives
a myriad impressions -trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the
sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of
innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the

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life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of od

(p. 189).
Interestingly, Woolf s own language in the passage is itself driving
the meaning as much as the meaning drives the language. Consider
'moved off, or on, and refuses to be confined any longer', in which
can be observed the self-conscious language user reflectively pausing
on those prepositions that cause learners so much trouble too. More-
over, Woolf iconically enacts the idea she refers to, as her sentence
itself 'moves on' (or off). A model of language as encoding and decod-
ing of algebraically representable propositions is clearly inadequate
here. Notice, too, that the phrases I refer to are themselves embedded
(as we might say) in a metaphor of language as clothing, which (like
the communication = information paradigm) seeks to perceive ideas
and language as separable, but in practice finds the very condition of
thought is linguistic (typically, as here, metaphoric).
But Woolf was a novelist, it will be objected. What can she offer
the hard-pressed language teacher (except, perhaps, solace and escape)?
Or in the words of another phenomenologist (himself deeply influenced
by literary text), the conversation analyst Harvey Sacks, 'You do not
get, from somebody doing "being ordinary", a report of the playful light
on the liquor glasses, or the set of his eyebrows, or timbre of his voice.'
('On doing "being ordinary", p. 4l6). Instead you could hear (as found
in Sacks' own data):
He's just a real, dear nice guy. Just a real, real nice guy. So we were
really talking up a storm, and having a real good time, had a few drinks
and so forth, and he's real easygoing. He's intelligent, and he's uh, not
handsome, but he's nice looking, and uh, just real real nice, person-
able, very personable, sweet (p. 416).
Notice the patterning of this everyday utterance, the repetitions, the
casual metaphor ('talking up a storm') and strategic vagueness ('and so
forth' refers to a shared cultural schema of <evening in a bar>). Sacks'
main point, however, is the creative effort that goes into presenting
oneself in everyday life, through language, as ordinary. (See also Goff-
man, 1959). This woman has 'just' met a nice guy, nothing special, not
super-intelligent, no large claims are being made for her experience.
Nevertheless, Sacks and Woolf are not so far apart as may at first
appear. The contention of Sacks and of conversation analysts more gen-
erally is that while everyday language is not always self-evidently poet-
ic ('the timbre of the voice'), speakers put in a lot of hard linguistic

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work to make themselves acceptable to interlocutors and audiences (who

work co-operatively with them to achieve ordinariness. Ordinariness is
not a default condition, it is a human social and creative achievement.
Thus, while Woolf insists on the extraordinariness of the everyday,
and agonises over how to represent or re-create this in her writings,
Sacks, not inconsonantly I think, insists on ordinariness as a linguistic
achievement: 'it takes work' to "be ordinary"; it doesn't just happen
(p. 414). And a key way in which we achieve the condition of ordi-
nary language speakers in others' ears and eyes (fluency or 'compe-
tence' in the language teacher's terms) is through the stories we so art-
fully and continually tell each other in our everyday conversations
(compare Polyani, 1979).
An increasing body of data provides eloquent testimony to creativity
and polished performance in the narrative art of ordinary speakers in
everyday conversation (Labov and Waletzky, 1967; Linde, 1993; Polanyi,
1979). There are even valuably annotated transcripts available to the
language teacher. I have successfully used Crystal and Davy's (1969)
collection in Advanced Conversational English in language teaching class-
rooms for many years, though increasingly supplemented by more
recent corpus collections. Consider the 'Driving Incident' extract, which
never ceases to fascnate students, and sends them off on their own
driving anecdotes, incidentally promoting much valuable vocabulary
learning! I have over many years investigated with students the ways
in which the polished native speaker performance of this episode dif-
fers from their own versions. The characteristically British use of col-
loquial nouns as verbs is usually a suprise ('she backed out the car',
where learners will say (or write, indifferently,) she 'reversed' the car),
or all those phrasal verbs themselves, and lexically empty or vague
terms, with scatterings of pronouns: 'she put it into reverse', 'she had
to pul forward' and the like. Learners delight in the unknown term
'gingerly' ('she carne out very GINGERLY'), which I always have trou-
ble explaining, but which inevitably proves to be one of the most mem-
orable vocabulary items on the course: colourful, lively language, note,
is enjoyed and remembered, whatever the frequency lists might dictate.
We also discuss the way that native speakers will always include in
their narratives the onomatopoeic terms Saussure and his progeny have
taught us to distrust or ignore, and which less confident speakers, char-
acteristically, never dar employ: 'she ran into the garage doors/ THUMP'.
Creativity may not be elegant, can even be clichd if taken out of con-
text, but used appropriately in a good story is very effective. Other

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poeticisms used by this speaker fascnate my learners and are remem-

bered by them (especially since they are usually reinforced within a
few days -these creative resources are available to all fluent speakers):
'she was getting into a bit of a flutter', 'put her into a bit of a flap',
'shaking like a leaf, 'she looked around frantically'. The fricative /{/
clearly has a related meaning in these phrases (discuss it with students!).
Just so Bolinger (1950) proposed the initial 'fl-' sound in English as
'phenomenon of movement', and 'gl-' as 'phenomenon of light, while
'-itter', '-ow', '-are', suggest (respectively) 'intermittent', 'steady', conti-
nuity, and 'intense', henee yielding flitter, floto, flare and glitter, glow,
glare. Or what about '-ust' {must, rust, crust, dusi) referring to some
kind of 'surface formation? Crystal himself has written of slime, slither,
slug, sloppy and others as often reporting wet/ unpleasant experiences
(Crystal, 1987, p. 174) Poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins or Tennyson
were not complete eccentrics; they were exploiting meaning-sound
resources known to the speaker of 'Driving Incident' as well as to his
listeners, however subconsciously, but such competencies have been
marginalised in mainstream linguistic approaches. Whether you are
sceptical or convinced, the very exercise of exploring these possibili-
ties with students can be an absorbing learning experience.
We should pause here momentarily on the question of iconicity to
note that a feature of language referred to within living memory as friv-
olous, non-scientific and the like, pushed to the recesses of conscious-
ness of language professionals, is making a strong comeback under the
auspices of cognitive linguistics. Once again, the marginal (as with poet-
ic language vs. 'ordinary language') may be more central than linguis-
tic orthodoxies tell us. In other words, while Saussure may have right
about the ultmate arbitrariness of the symbol 'tree' or 'sheep', the fact
is that fluent speakers of a language develop a knowledge of the relat-
edness of tems which is iconic and helps them to use the language
fluently and creatively, and these iconic features are sytemic and can
(must) be accessed, discussed and learned. Teachers can faciltate or
obstruct this natural and normal process of language acquisition. Notice
too that iconicity has been observed at levis above the word: 'He opened
the bottle and poured the wine', not *'He poured the wine and opened
the bottle' (example from Ungerer and Schmid, 1996, p. 251), up to the
level of discourse. In brief, the important cognitive principie proposed
in such work, is that linguistic labels and codings are mentally inter-
twined for speakers of a language in important ways. (See Ungerer and
Schmid for a useful introductory discussion and further references).

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Another important contribution of cognitive linguistics to what may

be termed the poetics of everyday life is in the study of metaphor.
Briefly, the proposal of Lakoff and Johnson, Lakoff, Gibbs (1994) and
others of this persuasin, is that metaphor is pervasive in language use
and -once again the reversal I hope the reader is almost beginning to
expect by n o w - far from a minor and peripheral phenomenon,
metaphor is the foundation of language use, and the crucial mediation
of language, culture and thought. The idea is not without its critics (e.g.
Steen, 2000), but undoubtedly, like vagueness and. ambiguity before
them, once you start looking for metaphor you find it everywhere, and,
predictably, the metaphors we use can be viewed as systematically relat-
ed in taxonomic 'fields' (see what I mean?) of ideas: Tm dying for a
drink'/ 'I could kill for a drink'. Consider the metaphor of the Human
as a Plant: someone can be called a cabbage, vegetable, couch pota-
to, pansy, wallflower, weed, willowy, etc. We talk of the 'flower' of his
youth, a 'tuft' of hair, 'roots' of hair, nails, teeth. Human beings can
bloom, go to seed or wilt in the heat. She can be the apple of my eye,
a peach, while another is a lemon, or even dead wood to be cut out
(university lecturers). We peel off our clothes each night, and mellow
with age. (These images are taken from Andrew Goatly's very practi-
cal study of The Language of Metaphor, a delightful and stimulating
browse for any language teacher. For further exploration of metaphors
in everday language use, see Goatly, 1997). A key point I would wish
to make here, however, as the study of idioms also confirms (Moon,
1998) is that such metaphors are not as we might think frozen [sic], to
be catalogued and learned in lists, but a creative resource. Foley (1997,
p. 361) quotes a nice example of the anthropologist on a field trip in
frica, knowingly dropping his local proverb into a conversation with
a native speaker:

Od Man: Ah, you are becoming a Maninka. You speak the language
like one of us.
Newcomer: No matter how long a log lies in the water, it never
becomes a crocodile.
Od Man: Ah, my son, a log lying in the water is still a cause of fear!
We are (and are not) a long way from asking the time of the next
train to Oxford. (I am reminded of a recent joke about leaves on the
Une: What line? enquires the cynical British rail traveller. We are now
in the thick of language culturing. For linguistic creativity and joking,
see Chiaro, 1992; Norrick, 1993; Crystal, 1998).

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Closer to home, let us follow a Mrs Dalloway, 'an ordinary mind

on an ordinary day', as she pursues her way down the high street. She
notices shop signs ('Cod Almighty' is a favourite of mine, in South-
mead, Bristol, near a hairdresser's called 'Kutz'), advertising, newspa-
per headlines and other media. She might notice the van of the Man
in a White Van (The Sun's modern equivalent of the man-in-the-street),
'Also available in white' graffitied in the dirt (see Cook, 1996, on cre-
ativity in graffiti), or (observed in the aftermath of petrol price demon-
stra tions) 'Tony Blair is unfair'. She may hear a snatch of football com-
mentary as several million did when Manchester United played
Bordeaux in the European cup in 1999 (these examples collected by
Goulioumis, a student at University of Wales Swansea, for his project
on 'The Language of Sport'): 'a crisp, incisive United move four min-
utes before half time' (alliteration on /s/ and /v/, the language is gen-
erally itself crisp and incisive); or consider the linguistic celebration of
United's goal: 'It's the first Ryan Giggs goal in the competition and what
a beauty, so simple, so direct, so effective. It's Manchester United'; (it
could just as easily be Persil, it seems to me). Atkinson (1986) else-
where observes the importance of the rhythmic triplet in politicians'
speeches. (Whatever happened to 'Education. Education. Education'?).
Here we see that it is a rhetorical ploy (emphasis and closure) more
widespread across other fields of discourse. If, as Sacks arges, one
constraint on human communication is the need to appear ordinary, its
complement (compare Labov and Waletzky's (1967) dreaded 'so what?'
response to a narrative) is to keep attention and interest in one's sto-
ry. In the same way, Attridge (1988) has argued that literary language
is, indeed, 'different', if not always in the ways we might expect, yet
cannot afford to be so different that, even with additional concentra-
tion, it remains incomprehensible. So, too, so-called ordinary language
cannot be so ordinary as to be uninteresting (compare Tannen, 1989).
But, it will be objected, Woolf s characters and milieux are often
criticised because they are not representative or ordinary, and the idea
of Mrs Dalloway at a football match is deliberately absurd. One last
example then, after which I rest my case for pervasive poetic qualities
in ordinary language use. On Saturday mornings on BBC Radio 4, host
John Peel (yes he who coached a generation in musical taste!) hosts a
programme called 'Home Truths' in which the deadpan commentator
interviews resolutely ordinary people only to repeatedly discover what
extraordinary experiences they have had or how very different they are
to the rest of us (or are they?). 'I thought this sort of thing only hap-

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pened in films' (this edition of the programme) is a typical response

to what Ufe throws at us, or life is stranger than fiction'. At the very
least truth and lies, fiction and reality, ordinary and literary language,
are not easily distinguished.
On the morning of 25 November 2000, then, as I mulled the text
for this paper, I noted down neologism in the second story of 'Home
Truths' (a 'gazumpee' = one who has been gazumped, which requires
an understanding of the absurd nature of housebuying in Britain, as
well as of English morphology), or a pun in the third story (a listen-
er's pet budgie called 'Onion' ('Onion budgie', which requires a good
knowledge of traditional British fare). Another listener called in with a
story of how he 'crawled up the stairs, literally' one night. It occurred
to me (confirmed by entries in the Collins Cobuild Dictionary) that like
many other adjuncts ('sincerely', 'honestly'... etc.), 'literally' usually indi-
cates that one is about to tell a whopper, and that this was a relative-
ly unusual use. It has been observed by Winner (1988), and others (e.g.
Friedman and Tucker, 1990) that one of the most basic things children
need to learn about language is to (at least) read between the Unes.
Pretence and deception (not just lies but metaphor, irony, implication,
presupposition, sarcasm and more) are -yes, again!- more the norm
than the exception. 'Literal' language, like 'ordinary' language, if it exists
at all, is very much the exception. But I really began to pay attention
to the radio programme as phrases I had discussed with students ear-
lier in the week began to appear thick and fast -'out of the blue' (com-
mon in conversation, according to McCarthy and Crter, 1997), 'kick
in/off, surely now the most common way to say 'begin' in British Eng-
lish conversation (back to football?). Similarly, the woman speaking had
suffered a shock (contacted by a brother she had never even known
existed), and naturally, 'I started to shake, y'know, like a leaf. We
know. Noticeable, too, in these interviews and comments is the densi-
ty of metalinguistic reflection. My favourite on this occasion, though,
was the creativity of morphology use: 'I was elated, exhilarated... and
every other -ated'. Creativity indeed.

2. CULTURE AS THE LINGUISTIC PRACTICES OF EVERYDAY LIFE

'CULTURE IS ORDINARY' (RAYMOND WILLIAMS)

Speaking, or language use more broadly, is a cultural practice. Speak-

ers transmit, reproduce, transgress and modify cultures as they speak

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 GEOFF HALL

and in their very speaking. Thus words matter, and as I have tried to
show, the precise forms of words matter, as any speaker is fully aware.
In fact, studies in recent years of spoken data demnstrate again and
again that the metalingual function of language, where the linguistic
forms themselves become a focus of attention to speakers, is much
more important than Jakobson's (1960) original account suggested. To
study language uses is to study culture, and ultimately to study what
being human means in various contexts of utterance. In such a per-
spective, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology take
on a special relevance, as culture is viewed as performance, in partic-
ular linguistic performance. The ways in which communicative acts are
executed takes on a special interest of its own (see Duranti, 1997):
[I]n the most ordinary of encounters... social actors exhibit a particular
attention to and skills in the delivery of a message ... [I]n speaking there
is always an aesthetic dimensin, understood as an attention to the form
of what is being said... We are constantly being evaluated by our lis-
teners and by ourselves as our own listeners (Duranti, 1997, p. 16).
Speakers of a foreign language will be very familiar with varieties
of evaluation! A further implication still of the view of language as per-
formance (elaborated on in Duranti's helpful introductory chapter) is
the view that language is pervasively and inescapably creative, as exam-
ples in this paper have already tried to suggest:
To be a fluent speaker of a language means to be able to enter any
conversation in ways that are seen as appropriate and not disruptive.
Such conversational skills, which we usually take for granted (until we
find someone who does not have them or ignore their social implica-
tions) are not too different from the way a skilled jazz musician can
enter someone else's composition, by embellishing it, paying around
with its main motiv, emphasising some elements of the melody over
others, quoting other renditions of the same piece by other musicians,
and trying on different harmonic connections -all of this done without
losing track of what everyone else in the band is doing (p. 17).

Important theoretical elaborations of these ideas with more exam-

ples can be found in the linguistic anthropological litera ture. For exam-
ple, Palmer and Jankowiak (1996): 'Culture ... is performed all the
time... to be living, vital culture, it has to be performed constantly.'
(p. 225). Or Sherzer (1987): [I]t is especially in verbally artistic and play-
ful discourse, such as poetry, magic, verbal duelling, and political rhet-
oric, that the resources provided by grammar, as well as cultural mean-

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 THE POETICS OF EVERYDAY LANGUAGE

ings and symbols, are activated to their fullest potential and the essence
of language-culture relationships becomes salient. ... [Qjuestions of speech
play and verbal art [are] central (p. 295)... I say that language does not
reflect culture but that language use in discourse creates, recreates, and
modifies culture.' (p. 301) Chapter 18 of Foley (1997) contains a use-
ful overview of some of this work ('Genre: Poetics, Ritual Languages,
and Verbal Art', pp. 359-378, with suggestions for further reading append-
ed). Norrick's (1993) study of conversational joking is a good example
of such an orientation, applied through valuable conversation analytic
examples. Once again, we are faced with a Derridean reversal of val-
es so far as language and the language arts are concerned (Derrida,
1974, 1977), as Norrick demonstrates that, far from frivolous, unimpor-
tant, barely worth noticing (and certainly often unnoticed), joking in
conversation is frequent, important quantitatively, but also qualitatively
in that normal conversation could not carry on without those painful
puns, delibrate misunderstandings, narratives and the like exemplified
and analysed in his book. Redfern (1984) is quoted approvingly, though
now with a wider remit claimed: 'Puns illuminate the nature of lan-
guage in general' (quoted p. 84; another very Derridean -that is, anti-
Saussurean) proposition. 'The frequency and persistence of spontaneous
joking in everyday talk suggest that our conversation often tends more
toward performance and entertainment than to the expeditious
exchange of information' (Norrick, 1993, p. 131)- the view I nave else-
where referred to a 'transactional' information-exchange view of lan-
guage. (See also Cook, 2000).
Culture, then, is significantly performed through language, which is
not so ordinary as was once thought. Ordinary language, if the term
has any meaning at all (what is the standard from which literary lan-
guage' supposedly deviates?) is itself playful, metaphoric, focused on
form and the linguistic code, not arbitrary but typically motivated.
Expressed in this way, the characterisation of language may be too
provocative for some. Indeed, I would be the first to recognise the
need to talk about specific instances of language use according to sit-
uation, participants and so on. Generalisations like 'language' are always
dangerous. I believe the real test for propositions such as those
advanced here will be to consider the poetics of the service encounter
(restaurants, post offices) or of faxed sales orders as limit cases where
poetic creativity is likely to be at a minimum, and which are certainly
linguistic situations of interest to many of our more vocationally-ori-
ented language learning students. I note, nevertheless, a colleague I

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 GEOFF HALL

have recently shared an office with, who regularly opens serious trans-
actions with state agencies with comments like 'Ah, you're not an answer-
ing machine, are you?' and proceeds in various other ways to establish
rapport (or further antagonise!) as the transaction proceeds. Not so far
after all from Norrick's leisure-time joshing within an extended family.
And any academic will confirm that the language students who wish
or need to study through English need is highly performative (compare
Dunbar, 1996).

3. T H E RELEVANCE OF THE POETIC VIEW OF LANGUAGE

TO FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

By this point, the more sceptical reader will have departed to read
something more sensible (commonsense-last refuge of the ideologue).
Yet I also envisage a language professional interested by much of the
preceding argument, perhaps even convinced to some degree as regards
the nature of language and the making of culture. At the same time,
this more sympathetic reader -a re-run of the long-established unease
of all applied linguistic work- will want to know how this should affect
syllabuses, materials design and even individual language class activi-
ties and classrooms. It is not the intention here to offer detailed recipes
to teachers already drowning, to my perception, in a sea of commer-
cially produced resources, internet chat sites and bulletin boards. I
would like in closing, rather, to sitate my argument with regard to the
two traditional justifications for language teaching work, by target aim
of the learners (end) and by means (how the end might best be
achieved through formal education). First, the end. If real language is
(to revert to Woolfs phrase) like this', then educationalists and learn-
ers should be made fully aware that is so. Second, the preceding argu-
ment for the importance of linguistic form is one that seems to me
highly relevant to language activities, and likely to be favoured by learn-
ers for face validity and memorability as well as interest valu. That is,
we can now respond with informed conviction to the age od demand
for a focus on form, which has for so long been a bugbear of the com-
municative language teacher. This is not the od 'clamour for grammar'
vindicated; our students, like us, still need to learn much about the
nature of language, and in particular of this specific language they are
learning. Ironically, though, as Cook (2000) points out, we remember
the philosopher who 'pulled the jaw of the hen', so ridiculed by Sweet,

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 THE POETICS OF EVERYDAY LANGUAGE

along with snatches of poetry, jokes and other aesthetic language

instances: these can stay in the mind for reanalysis by the learner, just
as the child learning a first language listens to incomprehensible 1920s
language from Beatrix Potter, formulaic pragmatic language routines,
18th century nursery rhymes and others. Initial comprehensibility is not
always as important as patterning and salience in psycholinguistics. Face
validity, interest, relevance, memorability. Ellis (e.g. 1993) and others
(Hulstijn and Schmidt, 1994) have in parallel ways been emphasising
the importance of language awareness and focus on form from within
a more orthodox applied linguistics. There are advantages as well as
difficulties of dealing with real language data but at least we can now
posit that real language data (including Literature or literature) will be
creative verbal art. Evidence from child first language acquisition is sug-
gestive. Pre-linguistic and early phonological awareness developed
through word games, nursery rhymes and the like, predicts and pro-
motes literacy skills and so success in education (Adams, 1990; Goswa-
mi, 198?). Infant and pre-school metaphoric proficiency predicts vocab-
ulary size and, again, literacy skills in later school Ufe (Paprott and
Dirven, 1985; Becker, 1994). Learning a second language, we are fre-
quently reminded, is not the same as learning a first language. The
aspects in which the two processes differ, however, -the previous
knowledge and experience of another language system, principally-,
seem to me only further argument in favour of the poetic view of every-
day language. The forms are what the learner wants and is right to
want: the forms are indeed important in all the ways I have outlined.

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